By Tyler Rong
The recent boom in user-friendly AI has changed the landscape in education. From summarizing long articles to creating entire essays from a single prompt, ChatGPT and other tools have become a huge disrupter in the classroom.
While many debate whether the technology is good or bad, one thing is for certain: AI is here to stay and educators must move quickly to integrate this new technology into the curriculum.
The Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara has taken a proactive lead in the field with its recent introduction of a new AI Writing Program Policy.
Daniel Frank, one of the writers of the new policy, has been a lecturer in the Writing Program for six years, teaching courses that include first-year composition, multimedia, and technical writing.
His background in technology and composition drove him to want to create a workable policy for the university to support faculty and a clear foundation from which to discuss the use — and misuse — of AI tools such as ChatGPT in UCSB educational environments.
“This technology is very wiggly and is in a constant state of growth and change,” Frank said in a recent interview. “Don’t get me wrong: we’re seeing steady and gradual improvement in the models. But I think there is an upper limit on what a Large Language Model by itself can do. And within that limit, I see a way to work with it in my classroom.”
Dan Frank, a UCSB Writing program lecturer who recently led the department in authoring a new AI policy for educators.
Frank’s research includes AI art and writing technologies, game-based pedagogy, virtual text spaces, passionate affinity spaces, and connected learning. He is continually helping students find their own passions as they create, play, and communicate research and argumentation within digital communities.
Frank says a key aspect of the Writing Program policy is its potential to provide personalized learning experiences. With AI as part of the teaching arsenal, feedback can be tailored to each student’s unique writing style and areas for improvement. This level of personalization is challenging to achieve in a conventional classroom setting, especially with the diverse student population at UCSB.
This new approach may pave the way for a different type of interactive learning. It’s not just about receiving feedback, Frank says, it’s about understanding it and implementing it effectively. AI tools can provide instant feedback, allowing students to learn from weak approaches and rectify them in real time.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, recently released an article called “Teaching With AI,” which also offers a guide for teachers on how to use ChatGPT in classrooms, suggesting prompts and explaining ChatGPT limitations and bias. It shares stories from educators who are already employing ChatGPT to enhance student learning and provides resources for teaching with and about AI.
Frank says both manufacturer guidelines for teachers and those devised by educators themselves will help navigate this terrain in the short term, but that technologies move quickly and educators must continue to adapt.
“The major area of concern I have is if the model ever gains sufficient complexity to do more than simply produce word patterns,” Frank said. “If the model begins to develop a rich contextual and rhetorical awareness, my driving pedagogical approach here will be thrown out the window and it will be back to the drawing board.”
Still, there is time, he says. “I am confident that such an advancement is a ways off and would rely on a completely different technology infrastructure.”
Here are some key takeaways from the new UCSB Writing Program AI Policy:
Integrating AI as one of many feedback tools, to provide insights to students that complement traditional methods such as peer review and instructor notes in order to enhance critical thinking and creative expression.
Students must maintain academic integrity and honesty when using AI writing tools, acknowledging any assistance they receive. Clear guidelines are provided to instructors and students on the acceptable use of AI writing technology, such as how to verify AI-generated information, in light of its tendency to produce incorrect or fabricated data.
Fostering critical thinking about biases and fairness concerns associated with AI writing technology. The policy encourages classroom discussions on AI ethics, urging students to critically evaluate AI-generated content and understand their responsibility to maintain their unique authorial voice.
Exercising caution with AI detection tools, with a call for diverse assessment strategies by instructors to evaluate students’ work accurately, avoiding undue reliance on AI detection tools that may produce false positives or have other associated risks.
This image of a diverse group of students sitting around a table inside a UCSB conference room was created via a prompt to OpenAI’s DALL-E tool.
What does this all mean for the student at this moment? Mainly, that academic integrity is still valued above all else. Writing Program faculty believe it’s important for instructors and students to have discussions to make sure everyone in class is on the same page when it comes to AI in the classroom.
Frank looks toward a positive future for the implementation of AI in writing spaces on campus and beyond, especially since UCSB’s Writing Program plays a strong leadership role in writing education nationally. “I am hopeful that the policy statement does influence other programs,” he said.
Tyler Rong is a third-year Economics major at UCSB. He wrote this article for his Digital Journalism class.